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Sex-murder trial of Christopher Wallace begins in Muskegon

Christopher-Wallace-trial.JPG

Christopher Lamont Wallace, center, on Feb. 4, 2014, at his trial for open murder in the Oct. 21, 2011, strangulation death of Jennifer Phillips. At left is his public defender, Fredric Balgooyen. At right is court bailiff Tom Kresnak.
(John S. Hausman | MLive.com)

MUSKEGON, MI – When Muskegon police officers entered the locked, darkened apartment of Jennifer Phillips on a “well-being check” the evening of Oct. 21, 2011, they didn’t know what to expect.

“What they find inside, shocking and brutal as it was, is a scene right out of a murder mystery,” Muskegon County Senior Assistant Prosecutor Matt Roberts told jurors in his opening statement Tuesday, Feb. 4, at the murder trial of Christopher Lamont Wallace.

First they found Wallace lying face-down and seemingly unresponsive – other than momentarily raising his head – on the floor of the living room.

Then they found the 37-year-old Phillips face-down in her dry bathtub, unclothed, head under the faucet, dried soap film covering her body, a towel under her head.

She was bruised and had ligature marks around her neck.

Eventually, the prosecutor said, police found what authorities say was the murder weapon: a lamp with a “very long cord,” bagged up with many other items, including bedding and bloody towels, in a plastic garbage bag. The Michigan State Police crime laboratory later found DNA of both Wallace and Phillips on the cord, Roberts said.

“The defendant used that lamp cord to choke the life out of Jennifer Phillips,” Roberts said.

The prosecutor’s theory is that Wallace killed Phillips “in the course of committing a sexual assault” on her, Roberts said. “He went over there intending harm, and he strangled her to death.” That would be first-degree murder.

In his opening statement, Wallace’s public defender, Fredric Balgooyen, challenged jurors to hold the prosecutor to his burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, suggesting that the evidence wouldn’t prove Wallace guilty.

“Our defense is going to consist of showing you the unanswered questions in the proofs that he’s presenting,” Balgooyen said.

“This is a case where the police found this man on the floor, and immediately focused on him as the ... perpetrator, and they set about to prove that the was. We suggest there are a multitude of questions that aren’t answered by the forensic material.”

Jury selection went unusually quickly for a murder case, with panel of 13 jurors and alternate seated before lunchtime, roughly two hours after the “array” of potential jurors was brought into the courtroom.

Before the jurors were sworn in, Balgooyen challenged the absence of African-Americans in the jury array. He acknowledged that he couldn’t prove any bias in the selection of potential jurors to be called, which is done randomly by computer.

The trial judge, Muskegon County Chief Circuit Judge William C. Marietti, rejected Balgooyen’s motion because no racial bias could be shown. He said he had reviewed the county’s juror-notification process a few years ago and found “an effort to reach out and be as randomly selective as possible.”

In testimony Feb. 4, Phillips’ mother, Marsha Phillips, identified a necklace police said they found in one of Wallace’s pockets. She said she’d given her daughter the necklace in August 2011.

Muskegon Police Officer Christopher Woodard repeated testimony he had given at earlier hearings, describing he and another officer entering the apartment at the request of Jennifer Phillips’ parents and boyfriend after they couldn’t contact her for a full day.

Woodard described finding first Wallace, then Phillips’ body.

Wallace, 36, a convicted repeat rapist and a parole absconder, went on trial Feb. 4 on a charge of open murder as a fourth-time habitual offender. He’s already serving a prison term of 40 to 75 years for a 2012 conviction of first-degree criminal sexual conduct causing injury, for a 2005 rape in Kalamazoo.

Phillips died in a two-apartment parolee-placement home in the 100 block of Allen Avenue in Muskegon. Wallace, a fellow parolee, had lived in the same house earlier in a separate apartment. Their stays overlapped for about two days in late August 2011, and authorities believe they met at that time, although they weren’t close acquaintances.

In addition to the Kalamazoo case, Wallace served prison time earlier for assault with intent to commit sexual penetration, in the 2005 assault of a 30-year-old woman who was walking home from a friend's house in Muskegon Heights. He was on parole from that when Phillips was killed.

Wallace also served prison time in the late 1990s for convictions of carrying a concealed weapon and attempted larceny from a person.

John
S. Hausman covers courts, prisons, the environment and local government for
MLive/Muskegon Chronicle. Email him at jhausman@mlive.com and follow
him on Twitter.